“The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.” — Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D-MN)

ARLINGTON (CBS) – A blog threatening members of Congress in the wake of the Tucson, Arizona shooting has prompted Arlington police to temporarily suspend the firearms license of an Arlington man.
It was the headline “1 down and 534 to go” that caught the attention. “One” refers to Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head in the rampage, while 534 refers to the other members of the U.S. House and Senate.

Police are investigating the “suitability” of 39-year-old Travis Corcoran to have a firearms license

Let's ignore for the moment how many people were investigated for making similar comments about George W. Bush. Let's look at the "logic" being exercised by the Arlington Po-Po, shall we?

They claim that Corcoran is so dangerous that, while he has done nothing more than put up a blog post, he must be restrained from possessing firearms. However, it appears that it's not worth it for the police to follow him, or stake out his place, or arrest him.

Huh?

Look, guys, if you think that his speech rises to the level of an actual threat of specific harm to specific persons, he should be in jail. If you're not sure, then do the leg work to establish whether it is or not.

So, what do we know about the Arlington Police Department? We know that they're lazy - nobody assigned to watch over this "dangerous" suspect. We know that they're biased - Arlington is a hotbed of George W. Bush hatred, and the last decade would offer a wealth of examples of similar or worse speech, none of which was investigated.

And we know that they're idiots. It's not like there isn't a ton of case law on how the First Amendment applies to threats of political violence. Arlington will lose this, if it ever gets to trial. Post Heller and McDonald, they'll lose even worse. Idiots.

But this is, as JayG points out, an attack not only on the First Amendment, but on the Second as well. An attack of this sort - groundless in logic, and arguably mendacious in nature - is an attack on all. And so I have to stand with TJIC.

I am TJIC. So are you. If you blog, you are hereby authorized to use this image (created by your humble host, using The Gimp, not that it took any skill). Please link back to this post.

It would be one thing if the law were applied equally to all. It's not, and it will be applied disproportionately to us, because we hold views considered by some in power to be Double Plus Ungood. Lefties in particular, this is your moment. You say that you stand for good governance. Prove it.

It was not a famous Massachusetts citizen who said We must all hang together, or surely we will all hang separately. Benjamin Franklin was more circumspect than the men from Massachusetts, such as Sam Adams, who said this:

Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say 'what should be the reward of such sacrifices?' Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!

Eliminationist rhetoric right there. Clearly, the Arlington Police would have seized his firearms. What a sad, degraded state for a once proud Commonwealth. It seems that I got out just in the nick of time.

UPDATE 21 January 2011 8:40: Boy, this is getting some attention.

To CNN, I have absolutely no idea what you mean by saying I'm an "affiliate" of TJIC. Other than a shared love of freedom and dislike of tyranny, there's no connection. I guess that Irony 101 is no longer a required course in Journalism School, but thanks for all the traffic!

To everyone who thinks the whole situation stinks, here's something that you can do to help (cut and pasted from my post here for your convenience):

TJIC himself has been pretty gracious about the whole thing, saying that he's in good shape (so far) and recommending that people toss another sawbuck in the plate on Sunday if they want to help the world out. Fine advice for all of us.

So instead of entertaining yourself with the latest Spiderman, Batman, etc., you can get yourself some practical knowledge from a variety of subjects.

The idea isn't a boycott, it's a buycott - support business that you like. I look and see all sorts of shooty goodness there, including this:

oday the M1 is enjoying a resurgence as a long range match rifle through the DCM program and the recent availability of imported surplus rifles. If you own a M1 Garand or it's magazine fed brother the M1A you'll want this course so that you can truly understand how your rifle functions, be able to totally strip it and reassemble it down to the last part and perform basic repairs. You will even understand how that mysterious clip feed system works and how to adjust it. Improving accuracy is also discussed. The differences and similarities internally between the M1 and the M1A are shown in detail.

I noticed this morning that the CBS story had been linked by Drudge, although it doesn't have any direct links back to Travis' website, but there probably are enough people who can figure it out to be able to crash the site.

He did no such thing. His comments were along the lines of the old lawyer joke: What do you call a ship full of lawyers at the bottom of the sea? A good start.

To say that is a threat to lawyers is laughable on its face. Same as with TJIC's comment. Inflammatory? Perhaps. Boorish? Maybe.

But the First Amendment seems to me to apply especially to speech that people are likely to see as boorish.

And your comment comparing people who peacefully exercise their Second (and First) Amendment rights at Tea Party rallies - even if they happen to be armed - with those who cut off the heads of their enemies, or blow up school buses filled with their enemy's children is not just hysterical, but idiotic.

Come back with a complaint when a Tea Partier actually opens fire - as opposed to a lefty psycho that the idiotic media has tried to pain as a Tea Partier - and we'll talk. Until then, you are complaining about political statements, not violence.

Borepatch--well said. What he said was boorish and in bad taste, but no threats were made and actually what he said was tame compared to what folks on the other side of the ideological fence have come up with.

I don't have to agree with the words to support the right to say them.

Hopefully this will wash out on the side of the First Amendment since the action taken is completely unconscionable and as Mr. B said in his post, a slippery slope that we cannot let pass unnoticed.

Thanks for the heads up on this. I have linked and posted about same. (also tried to trackback, if id didn't work let me know and I will try again).

This whole thing is reprehensible. But considering Levin and most of the other major talk show hosts who consistently get the current admins knickers in a knot, would also -in Levins case personally- have their lawyers eat the DOJ for lunch, and probably have SCOTUS rule in their favor, it is no wonder why it was a small blogger they went after. Perhaps it is time to remind them about the power of numbers (again).

Sorry, I can't get to excited about this; as, until people living in MA band together or the NRA gets of it's lazy ass and starts a legal defense fund, specificly for this case, that I can donate to I can't do anything her in TX.I kind of getting tired of poeple whining in MA ( or other places) about their crapy gun laws and I haven't seen any cases going to the Supreme Court, except in DC and Chicago. We need more. Instead of us just whining about it on our blogs let's have a call to actionn.

Iowa passed "Shall Issue" lgeislation which went into effect on 1 JAN 11. We thought it wa a good thing and that we'd finally won a small victory.

Now, 3 weeks later, the towns, cities, and counties are passing resolutions banning firearms on town, city, and county property. The Sheriff of my county says he won't enforce the new resolutions on county roads. Malls and businesses are posting "No Firearms Allowed" signs on their doors. So much for the victory.

TJIC - The point is talk to your lawyour start a defense fund a web site and ask for donations people like me will help as much as they can don't just ask us to whine about it. Gives us a way to help; get us involved.

Another minor quibble: TJIC may have used 534 but the "correct" number would to 545. And before anybody gets their knickers in a knot: I'm not threatening nor advocating anything. I just wouldn't shed any tears if the lot of them were to end up "at the bottom of the sea".

To Blue: Iowa's situation sounds FUBAR, and so was Virginia's, once, with liberal, "nanny" cities making LOCAL laws banning concealed carry. It worked (badly) only to have law-abiding arrested, and did nothing to cut crime. It took a lawsuit to say, "Hey, state law is supreme over any town, county, or other subdivision law." In Fairfax County, VA, public libraries tried to post No Guns signs. A lawsuit stopped that, too. Join your state-level gun rights organization. Try one of these; I can't vouch for any of them:

Surprisingly, Arlington is one of the best towns in metro Boston to be a gun owner. The chief there routinely issues "unrestricted" licenses to carry, allowing for CCW.

Boston, and most other towns in the area, puts "Restrictions: Sport and Target, No Concealed" on most licenses.

There have been some high-profile cases of chiefs revoking licenses for reasons of suitability. In Lowell, a man's collection of 40 guns was stolen from a basement vault, so he lost his LTC. A Boston police officer had hers revoked because she resigned from the force.

We have some lawsuits in the works that will seek to remove discretionary licensing in MA.

That can be found at Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 13, Section 242 of the United States Code for those who don't know. How about you get on it you deliberately myopic federal bastards. Might I point out that Sec. 241 would also arguably apply.

The irony is not lost, and Tam has said it best, that we are speaking here of "the cradle and the grave of liberty"...leave Mass behind? I would, but I am not the man that Mr. Adams was or Mr. Corcoran is.

But I *am* TJIC!

Sir, please find a way to solicit and accept contributions from us all for what is unquestionably the defense of us all.

@Anonymous said...> Do you want these comments shared with 1st graders? I hear he is a cub scout leader...

Yes, @Anonymous, it's true - I was a scout myself, I was an assistant scoutmaster to a troop of boy scouts in Ithaca, NY, and I'm a Den Leader to a group of cub scouts here in Arlington. I like giving back to my community.

Borepatch, can you check the IP address of the anonymous coward ? I want to see if it matches the IP address I have for the guy who seems to have filed the false police reports against me - an old political foe here in town.

The investigation is ongoing as of now. And his Twitter exchange unequivocally and repeatedly advocates and attempts to justify political assassination as a "legitimate tool" for citizens who take issue with the Federal government. Combining that with his blog posts ("1 down, 534 to go"), if this doesn't represent a "credible threat" (Arlington police), I don't know what does. http://thinkprogress.org/2011/01/20/libertarian-guns-boston/

Thnk, my first reaction was "glad you're quoting an unbiased source", but that is as unworthy as all the ThinkProgress commenters who are dismissing anything from Breitbart. So let's address your comment:

1. We just came out of 8 years of the most astonishingly violent rhetoric from the left, directed at George W Bush. I have a comment higher up that links to a Youtube video clip from the film "The assassination of George W. Bush". Nobody that I've heard of was ever prosecuted (or had their property seized) after making those sorts of statements.

2. TJIC made several posts on this subject, including one where he explicitly said that he did *not* advocate assassination of politicians. The one I found most thoughtful was the one where he applied Catholic "Just War" doctrine to the question, and said that political assassination fell far short of what might justify it, per JWD. I follow TJIC pretty regularly, and his site is down (and Google seems to have scrubbed the cache), so you'll have to take my word on this, although he says he'll put everything back once this is resolved.

3. What rankles is the arbitrariness (see point #1). I posted earlier this week about how the Left should be invested in good governance; this is a poster child for despotism: arbitrary exercise of authority based on the expression of what is unpopular to one side, while equal statements from the other side are given a pass. Since the Left is the crowd that wants to grow governmental authority, it's really telling that we're hearing nothing but silence from that side.

And so back to my opening statement about ThinkProgress. It's plausible that the crowd there are happy to see speech they don't like suppressed. I've had more than one (private) exchange with Massachusetts gun owners who are quite explicit that they feel intimidated by this, that opening their mouths (or posting comments) will be used against them.

If you think I'm being unfair to think that this is an outcome that would be welcomed over at ThinkProgress, I invite you to comment there on this intimidation aspect. I expect you'll see a lot of people heartily agreeing with my indictment of them. If not, point out their condemnation (or even their silence) and I shall apologize handsomely.

I had Dispatches from TJICistan bookmarked a while ago but that computer is in storage while I am in transition during a loooong move process. And then I read an article a bit ago about how a 'blogger' and 'comic book store owner' had his guns seized and a (carry permit?) (nullified?) because of what to me was a tongue-in-cheek remark, but definitely did not rise to the level of 'this is a threat and we need to act.'

And I didn't make the connection until I just saw it on Balko's theagitator.com and saw exactly WHO it was. TJIC, this sucks, and if I had any money I would definitely buycott my way into proclaiming I support our shared right to be flip and idly discuss and joke about the violent, gruesome, and oh-so-moist deaths of seated Senators and Congressmen.

And while we're at it, LEOs in Arlington. So if anyone wants to take potshots at LEOs in Arlington, be aware of your surroundings and be aware of what is behind your target, please!

Also I do not advise taking potshots at LEOs in Arlington. The preceeding is some combination of satire, absurdity, and a great big middle finger to the Arlington Police Department.

Katia, if you want to make a bumper sticker with this at CafePress, go ahead. I expect that most people won't know what you're talking about, but that probably applies to 70% of all the bumper stickers available today. ;-)

Timmeehh, that is extra sucky. Canada's screwed - it's turning into the UK which is REALLY screwed. The problem for us South Of The Border is that once you're well and truly screwed, you'll export your screwedness to us. :-(

@Captainonymous, I'm glad you qualified your post. Let's keep this from over heating. Some people think we're not going to vote ourselves out of this, but I'm not sure about that. At the extreme, there's the example I just set, where I voted with my feet. One less Blue State resident; one more Red Stater. We're not ready yet for the cartridge box.

Left...right...whatever you call it they're all politicians. If you want real "Hope" or change you have to take the career out of thier service and remove the self serving benefits so they begin to represent the people. vote term limits on ALL politicians and make them all return to society and live with the laws and votes they make. If not, they will maintaiin the elitist mentality and continue to save you from yourself because you aren't smart enough to take care of yourself. They will continue to invest with insider information because they have the access and ability to make decisions and vote to their benefits. If you make their positions as "Public Servants" short and pay them only for their time in "service" then politicians would have to serve and live with the decisions they made after they leave service. To include getting a job where they pay their bills like the rest of the taxpayers. ..

When I noticed Travis' blog was down, I assumed HE shut it down to avoid the trouble of crazies trolling, the idea that the thought police came in a shut him down never crossed my mind. After all, I live in America, where this shit doesn't happen, right? right?That only happens in Orwell novels, or regimes run by guys named Stalin, Mao, or Castro, right?

Maybe Glenn Beck's apocalyptic warnings about this country aren't so far out there.....

Not to trivialize what TJIC is going through, but I do wonder whether this gives him legal standing to challenge MA's gun laws on a broader basis, or whether he'd have to lose out in the investigation for that to be the case.

Considering how many ways this breaches constitutional law I would think he'd have a slam-dunk case, especially if they find against him.

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